


Starboard Mess, or, Five places in which an iguana was not hiding on the HMS Surprise (and one in which it was)

by feroxargentea



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Age of Sail, Community: perfect_duet, Gen, Iguanas, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-03 07:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8702992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: One of Stephen's iguanas is missing.Written for the 2016 perfect_duet Advent Calendar, with love.





	

 

* * *

 

“An average of seven knots and one half, a point or two west of southwest, with let us say three miles of leeway,” Jack muttered, “would place us approximately...”

He scribbled the figures on the back of an old muster list before leaning in to prick the ship’s position on the chart, but as he did so there came a sharp hissing noise, a sort of reptilian sniff, and when he looked up from his calculations (a particularly thorny piece of dead reckoning which could have done with his full attention), he caught the gaze of the creature perched on Stephen’s right shoulder, a grey scaly beast whose claws he had already established were uncomfortably sharp. It stared at him for another minute, its face set in a mask of unwavering imbecility, and then it slowly closed its eyes, breathed deeply and snorted out a jet of semi-crystallised brine in his direction. It missed.

“Stephen,” he began, “I really do think...”

No tactful words for what he really did think sprang to mind, however, and he was left watching the liquid soak into the black and white chequer of the cabin’s deck covering, leaving behind a salt-spangled mucoid residue.

“Quite remarkable, is it not, brother?” Stephen said, tickling the reptile under its warty chin. “Imagine how convenient it would be if such physiological capacity could be extended to the human subject; if your crew could rid themselves of excess bodily salt by the simple ejaculation of concentrated saline fluid!”

Jack nodded, suppressing a smile. In any other man the words might have had satirical intent, but Stephen was gesturing at the beast’s white-encrusted nostrils with the innocent enthusiasm only a natural philosopher could apply to such a monstrous creature.

“Your men would be able to consume their allotment of meat straight from the barrels,” Stephen continued, in an animated tone seldom utilised by him in connection with naval rations or indeed any matter in the nautical line. “Consider how greatly the ship’s fresh water requirement could be reduced by eliminating the need for steeping tubs!”

For a moment Jack tried to imagine it: a ship in which his men would be prepared to eat, without benefit of long soaking and boiling, the stiffened, crusty, brownish lumps the cooks hauled from the beef barrels; a ship whose decks would be littered not just with the wispy shakings from her rigging but with a constant rain of mucus from her crew.

“No doubt you are right, in the philosophical way,” he said, “but I’ll tell you what it is, Stephen: I would be obliged if you would take your reptiles elsewhere. The floor cloth may be replaced; my dockets and muster lists cannot. The great cabin is no place for physiology. Not if it cannot keep its nostrils to itself, at any rate.”

 

* * *

 

Marine iguanas, Stephen had called them, when he could be coaxed back into English from his happy wanderings amongst Latin epithets. He had re-embarked from the Galapagos Islands with one of the creatures perched on each shoulder like epaulettes, their tails dangling and their crests drunkenly askew, the larger specimen clinging to his larboard shoulder and the smaller one to starboard. Jack might almost have supposed it deliberate mockery of the naval uniform, were it not for the fact that Stephen would hardly have noticed had Jack replaced his own gold-bullion epaulettes with slush-soaked galley swabs.

Some wag amongst the afterguard had nevertheless dubbed the creatures Larboard and Starboard, and, as they continued to clutch at Stephen’s coat in preference to any other surface, the appellations had stuck. Once named, the beasts had of course become sacrosanct, and – forestalling any possible objections from Captain Aubrey – the crew hurried to supply the necessary greenery, fished fresh from the sea each morning by hands who credited the Doctor with their miraculous escape from the marthambles or the writhing gripes, and who were more than ready to spend part of their watch below hanging over the ship’s side and trawling for weeds to feed his pets.

This particular morning, however, all was not as it should be. The bucket of seaweed stood ready in the corner of the sleeping-cabin, but Stephen’s coat, hung across the back of his writing chair, had but a single grey lumpen beast latched onto it, awaiting its breakfast with reptilian indifference.

Starboard, the smaller and more agile of the two, was nowhere to be seen.

 

* * *

 

It being a Sunday, there was no time to worry the crew about missing iguanas, not when they had pigtails to be unwound and replaited and their best ribbon-seamed trousers and embroidered shirts to be struggled into. When they were all primped and lined up on deck for divisions, Jack marched up and down the rows, alert for unaccustomed becks or sniggers, but he found nothing but the usual Sunday good humour, the usual readiness to stand through yet another repetition of the Articles of War, provided it was followed with the traditional wedge of hot, suety plum duff. The decks below were in equally good order, the cockpit neat and the galley coppers shining with zeal, with not an reptile to be seen anywhere.

When Jack’s tour reached the sick bay, he found Stephen standing mute and downcast by the empty hammocks, with his loblolly boy Padeen fidgeting at his elbow, and all the bottles and dressings stacked in rigid rows. Jack glanced around in token inspection and hurried aft again as soon as he decently could.

Padeen followed him, beginning to stammer “Sta-Sta-Star...?” as soon as they were past the main hatch and out of the Doctor’s hearing, but Jack shook his head.

“Nothing yet,” he said. “You will have checked the medicine chests in the dispensary, I am sure, Padeen? And the creature is not hiding amongst Dr Maturin’s pickled asps, neither?”

“N-no, your Honour, sir.”

“Well,” Jack said, patting him on the shoulder and attempting a hearty tone, “Let us not go worrying the Doctor unduly, eh? It cannot have wandered far; a frigate is a finite thing, after all.”

 

* * *

 

For a while Jack wondered whether the midshipmen might have eaten the creature, the Surprise’s supply of rats having dwindled during her long voyage. It was not the usual naval way, to be sure, but once the reptile had been skinned and broiled and covered in onion sauce the difference might be negligible, at least to a half-starved youngster.

“Oh, no, sir!” Calamy said, shocked. “They’re a new species, sir, intended for King George! It would be tantamount to treason to eat them before they’ve been presented to him.”

“Besides, sir, the Doctor would be upset, was we to eat his reptiles,” Blakeney added, with a reproving look at the captain.

Calamy nodded. “Very upset, sir.”

Jack, under the full weight of his midshipmen’s righteous indignation, hemmed and turned away. Perhaps it was time to check the bread room instead.

 

* * *

 

Jack’s attempts to organise a search of his own accommodation were met with the customary enthusiasm.

“Which I checked there already, ain’t I?” was Killick’s hoarse, harried reply to whatever was suggested.

The bread room (“Looked there”), the Captain’s stores (“And there”), Dr Maturin’s sea chest (“God stone me, the first place I checked, ain’t it?”), the lockers under the stern windows, the quarter-galleries – even the precious silver-plated cheese dish had been opened, turned arsey-versey and shaken hard, though there was not the slightest chance a fully grown iguana could have been concealed in any of its individual compartments.

(This process, indeed, Killick would have defended as reasonable. Padeen’s distress had been communicated to the entire crew, who, having examined every place in which a reptile could possibly have hidden itself, had long since been reduced to examining those in which it could not. The smallest of the ship’s boys had even been lowered, head first and protesting loudly, through the seat of ease, in case Starboard might be found clinging to its underside, although there had been general relief that she had not.)

 

* * *

 

By evening the creature had still not materialised. Jack observed Stephen sitting disconsolate on a cheese of wads by the taffrail, his book unopened in one hand, the lone male iguana on one shoulder, and he shook his head. This would not do; discipline must be reasserted, if only to distract the Doctor from his moping.

“Let us have no more of this,” he told Pullings. “We shall beat to quarters.”

“Aye, sir. Beat to quarters!” Pullings cried, and the call was passed on, the familiar rat-tat-tat of the Marine drummer’s sticks drowned out by the equally familiar thunder of two hundred pairs of feet running to their action stations. As the chaos resolved itself into battle order, so Jack’s mind was soothed: everyone had his place, and whatever was not in place must in time be found and restored, for such was the naval way, world without end.

The great-gun exercise, however, was not the success it might have been. The Surprises, a thoroughly worked-up crew of old hands, were capable of firing three broadsides in five minutes, timed by the Doctor’s Breguet, but this evening they were hopelessly slow. The first broadside alone – a ragged, disreputable business – took a full five minutes, as each gun crew insisted on checking one last time before putting linstock to touch-hole, just in case Starboard might be curled up asleep in the barrel or amongst the wadding.

Jack watched the undamaged target drifting aft, and he set his jaw. This would not do. This really would not do.

“Mr Pullings,” he shouted over the roar as the men heaved on the tackles and dragged the gun carriages back up to the bulwarks, “We shall...”

He stopped short as a movement on the quarterdeck caught his eye, a movement that had no place in a great-gun exercise. His scraper, his second-best scraper, lay abandoned near the mizzenmast; he had thrown it aside as he ran to correct the elevation on Jumping Billy, and Killick had not yet found it and carried it off to safety. It was shifting slightly along the deck, and as Jack watched it he realised what was so amiss: the hat was shifting _against_ the roll of the ship.

He glanced over at Stephen, who was leaning forward, equally fascinated.

“Do you think...” Jack began.

“Hush, Jack.” Stephen held up one hand in warning and crept forward until he was almost within arm’s reach of the hat, and then he swooped down, grasping its edges to trap its contents. He delved inside and extracted a dark grey, long-tailed beast, which twisted out of his grip, scuttled up his arm and halted on his right shoulder, sniffing faintly. “There now, honey dear,” he said, petting her dorsal ridge, “I am sure nobody meant to upset you so.”

Jack picked up his scraper – its gold lace nibbled, its lining ruined and its cockade bent askew – and tossed it aside again. Killick would scold, but that was to be expected.

“Well, Stephen,” he said, “I see you have your cargo back in place, properly stowed and squared away. Perhaps, under the circumstances, gun practice might keep until tomorrow. What say you to some music instead?”

Stephen picked up his book and tucked it under his arm. “Certainly, my dear,” he said, smiling, “I should like that of all things.”

As he turned to climb down the companion-way towards the great cabin, the iguana on his starboard shoulder caught Jack’s gaze. Closing one eye at him in an imbecilic wink, she took a deep breath, paused a moment as if in thought, and then snorted her full day’s accumulation of salt all over the quarterdeck.

 

* * *

 

[Original back-of-envelope doodle of Starboard and the scraper](http://i.imgur.com/XUdtvz1.jpg)


End file.
